the _Figaro_, two of whom--Jules Sandeau and Felix
Pyat--were from Berry, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a
Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief
apprenticeship to literature and experience;--sharing with the rest both
their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap
restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree;
the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such
collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by
moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish
the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had
made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not
encourage Madame Dudevant's literary ambition, he showed himself kindly
disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing
instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus, once after a
little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in the Rue Cassini, he insisted
on putting on a new and magnificent dressing-gown, of which he was
exceedingly vain, to display to his guests, of whom Madame Dudevant was
one; and not satisfied therewith, must needs go forth, thus accoutred,
to light them on their walk home. All the way he continued to hold forth
to them about four Arab horses, which he had not got yet, but meant to
get soon, and of which, though he never got them at all, he firmly
believed himself to have been possessed for some time. "He would have
escorted us thus," says Madame Dudevant, "from one extremity of Paris to
another, if we had let him."

Twice again before the end of the year, faithful to her original
intentions, we find her returning to her place as mistress of the house
at Nohant, occupying herself with her children, and working at the novel
_Indiana_, which was to create her reputation the following year.

Meanwhile, a novelette, _La Prima Donna_, the outcome of the literary
collaboration with Jules Sandeau, had found its way into a magazine, the
_Revue de Paris_; and was followed by a longer work of fiction, of the
same double authorship, entitled _Rose et Blanche_, published under
Sandeau's _nom de plume_ of Jules Sand.

This literary partnership was not to last long, and to-day the novel
will be found omitted in the list of the respective works of its
authors. Its perusal will hardly repay the curious. The powerful genius
of Madame Dudevant, the elegant